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| Yes | 51% | 282 votes | Total: 553 votes | |
| No | 49% | 271 votes |
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Add to FavoritesMuch like virtually every other Bush administration creation, Guantanamo Bay is an American embarassment, a symbol of corruption and stupidity conveniently located beyond the reach of traditional human rights protections.
There are 335 prisoners remaining at the prison. According to U.S. officials, 80 of these prisoners will go on trial, and the rest will be released.
At the Abu Ghraib detention facility, innocent people were tortured, raped, and murdered. According to Kasim Mehaddi Hilas (detainee No. 151108), and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, those raped included an underage boy. This act of degradation was videotaped, and the Pentagon remains in possession of this video. The military personnel involved were given slaps on the wrist.
Michael Keller, a member of the Army National Guard who was stationed at Abu Ghraib, has written that numerous children were raped at the prison, and that his attempts to stop such atrocities were met with threats of punishment from his superiors.
The U.S. eventually handed Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis. But Guantanamo Bay remains ours. The Red Cross has described interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay as being "tantamount to torture."
The American people know that this prison holds innocent people. We know that torture is a barbaric and ultimately useless interrogation tactic. We know that it's wrong to imprison innocent people, and to keep them imprisoned after they have been declared innocent.
But we have also been trained to get on our knees in front of authority. We have been conditioned to jump whenever a preacher, politician, or marketing executive says "jump." And so we hang portraits of President Bush in our churches, just as Iraqi Muslims dedicated portraits and statues to Saddam Hussein. We look the other way when the CIA tortures people, just as the Iraqis looked the other way when Saddam Hussein tortured people. We rationalize our brutality with claims of patriotism. We wave the American flag as if we understand what it's supposed to symbolize.
President Bush claims that we must torture people to keep America safe, that we must imprison the innocent to protect the innocent. Of course, when the moment arrives that we are all in agreement, that we are all in lockstep with this brutal and backwards philosophy of justice, there will no longer be any need to secure the safety of this country, because its founding ideals and the exceptional character of its people will have been lost to the same fate that greeted Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini.
Get up off your knees, America. Demand an end to Guantanamo Bay.
Learn more about this author, Jonathan Young.
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No
Guantanamo Bay is vital for the survival of our country. Each captured terrorist imprisoned there is one less threat to our country, and one less extremist that is out there ready to strap a bomb to his body and blow up innocent people.
We are at war with a force of people whose sole mission is to destroy our country and our way of life. During wartime, it is acceptable (in fact, necessary) to take prisoners.
The lives of American citizens are the responsibility of the US Government. Putting terrorists in Guantanamo saves American lives, and thus, I have no problem with it existing. I'm not concerned about my tax dollars being spent to keep Guantanamo running. I'd rather that the money be spent there, protecting our country, than lining the pocket of yet another corrupt member of the House of Representatives.
If we close Guantanamo, what happens to the terrorists we capture? Are we supposed to just kill them outright? Well, then we would be no better then they are. We can't just catch them and then let them go, because then they are back on the battlefield and back trying to kill Americans. Guantanamo is the solution, and it needs to remain open and running as long as there are extremists out there trying to annihilate our nation.
Honestly, we treat the prisoners down there much better than the terrorists treat the prisoners they take. They aren't starved, they are allowed to pray, and they do not have to endure daily beatings. If Guantanamo was really the gulag it is portrayed to be, then the prisoners would be locked away in solitary rock-walled cells with no light, no water, no books, no food and a pig. The terrible atrocities you hear on the news about Guantanamo are not even close to accurate; the whole Koran in the toilet' debacle (that cost many people across the world their lives when Muslims rioted) was false information and completely fabricated. We are Americans; we are not butchers and we are not savages. We don't abuse these people, even though many of them would not hesitate to kill as many of us as they could if given the chance.
Quite frankly, despite the fact that we obey the Geneva Conventions when dealing with this prisoners, we need to remember that the men imprisoned in the Bay do not deserve the rights enjoyed by citizens of this country, because they are not Americans; they are the enemy, soldiers in a war who are fighting to destroy everything we believe in, and they were caught while trying to kill or help kill American citizens. They are prisoners of war, and Guantanamo Bay is one of the most important fronts of the war on terror.
Learn more about this author, Ian Essling.
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